This article is jointly published in collaboration between Real Change and the International Examiner.
Content warning: This article discusses acts of violence.
In the early afternoon of Friday, Nov. 8, a man walked up South Jackson Street to the corner of 12th Avenue South, stabbing five people in broad daylight. The brutal and seemingly unprovoked attack sent shockwaves across the Chinatown-International District (CID) community, which has seen concerns over public safety sharply rise in recent years.
The Nov. 8 attacks were preceded by a series of other stabbings in Little Saigon, centered on the blocks south and west of 12th and Jackson. According to The Seattle Times, a total of six stabbing incidents occurred in a 38-hour span between 1:35 a.m. Nov. 7 and 2 p.m. Nov. 8. Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers apprehended the suspect, 37-year-old Roland Jerome Lee, shortly after the mass stabbing attack.
SPD spokesperson Eric Muñoz said the department was investigating Lee’s connection to the other stabbing incidents and suspects he was responsible for at least five out of the six attacks that occurred on Nov. 7 and 8. Lee was jailed in the King County Correctional Facility (KCCF) with a $2 million bail posted. On Nov. 14, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (KCPAO) charged Lee with four counts of assault in the first degree and one count of assault in the fourth degree. No victims died from the attacks, but at least two people suffered severe injuries that required surgery, according to KCPAO charging documents.
Impact on the unhoused community
Several witnesses say the attacks appeared to primarily target the unhoused community of Little Saigon in the CID. The blocks around 12th and Jackson are widely perceived to be a hub for Seattle’s homeless community, with at least 100 unhoused people spending time in or transiting through the area most days.
During conversations with members of the homeless community of Little Saigon, Real Change observed that many people find community and friends in the neighborhood and participate in informal commerce there. The area is also a popular location for communal drug use. Since the election of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell in 2021, SPD and other law enforcement agencies have increased their presence in Little Saigon, frequently sweeping 12th from Jackson to South King Street to disperse informal vendors.
Under municipal law, vendors must obtain a permit to sell on sidewalks. This is often prohibitive to homeless street vendors, who may source stolen goods and operate on a cash basis. On Nov. 15, Harrell issued an executive order aimed at discouraging “illegal vending” by increasing SPD enforcement and streamlining the permitting process. However, it is unclear if this will discourage homeless people whose only source of income is street vending.
It is possible some of the people who could be further criminalized and policed under this executive order were the very people victimized by the stabbing attacks. Phoenix Grey, a homeless Seattleite and street vendor in Little Saigon, said she was nearly attacked by Lee, but narrowly escaped along the slope of Jackson between 10th and 12th Avenues South.
“I was not paying attention, and he was already behind me,” Grey said. “I felt somebody try to touch me, and I moved. I didn’t really see his face too much because I was scared. I just took off running, and then he tried to grab me again and got the back of my shirt. And then I just got out of my shirt and ran — I just took off the shirt really fast. That was scary. I came up here and yelled at my friends to come help me and then they went down there and he was gone.”
Grey said Lee stabbed two of her friends. Although they were both physically OK, she said they hadn’t mentally recovered yet. In an email to Real Change, Muñoz wrote that he was “not aware of any treatment or counseling” provided for the victims of the stabbings, nor would he be able to comment if that was the case.
Not much is currently known about Lee’s motives. Grey said Lee had visited the 12th and Jackson area before but that he more commonly frequented the intersection of Third Avenue and Pike Street, another common hangout spot for homeless people in downtown Seattle. She suspected Lee targeted the homeless community out of revenge.
“He was a part of my [Somali] friends,” Grey said. “They know him. They said he flipped out; he went crazy. Somebody I guess robbed him, and he was upset. He wanted to pay back everybody.”
Horace Anderson, another member of the homeless community in Little Saigon, said he also witnessed the stabbing attacks. He said that Lee was attacking homeless people at random, including a friend of his.
“It could have been mental issues,” Anderson said. “He was screaming out loud. I don’t know if it was for attention or what it was, but he was doing it just to be an asshole. I have no respect [for] or understanding of why he did it. It really kills me that people would do that. I understand everyone has their own issues. We all have to deal with stuff every day.
“But for him going out of his way just to make somebody’s life harder or to put them in pain, it just doesn’t make any sense,” Anderson continued.
According to his charging documents, Lee was released from KCCF in July after being jailed for 361 days for theft in the third degree. His last known address was the Compass Housing Alliance’s client services office in Pioneer Square, which provides mail services to people experiencing homelessness.
Rachtha Danh, a community organizer who lives and works in the CID, said the violence highlighted the consequences of what happens when people’s basic needs aren’t met. He related the stabbings to the vandalism attack on the Wing Luke Museum in September 2023, which he witnessed and said was ultimately caused by the systemic and structural violence homeless people are subjected to.
“The dude that broke the windows … I think he was living in his car and his car got broken into, and this was directly after the sweeps,” Danh said. “And this was a reaction to his car being broken into. When the sweeps happen, they disrupt people — people lose things. The folks who don’t have anything try to get things through different means. And they were probably trying to get something from his car in order to survive. And he experienced that upcycle of state violence from the sweeps. And then through him, the neighborhood experienced the upcycle of that violence.”
Sociology research has shown homeless people are disproportionately more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population. In February, three unhoused people were killed in Seattle. KCPAO charged the suspect, 26-year-old Liam Kryger, with two counts of murder. Kryger’s trial is currently scheduled for January 2025.
Persistent feelings of unsafety
Although the Nov. 7 and 8 stabbing attacks were likely targeted at the unhoused community of Little Saigon, the whole CID community has been affected.
Quynh Pham, executive director of Friends of Little Saigon Seattle, wrote in an email to Real Change that the attacks further heightened the feelings of unsafety among many of the residents, customers and workers who visit and live in the neighborhood.
“Our staff and community members are deeply distressed by the violence in our neighborhood. We don’t feel safe and continue to mourn the tragedies that occurred on our streets,” Pham wrote. “I don’t want to discuss the conditions in this neighborhood anymore, it’s been very heavy. While we need police to address crime, we also urgently require health and social services to support those suffering from drug addiction, behavioral health issues, and unmet basic needs.”
The stabbing attacks, which made national headlines, may have further contributed to a perception that the CID is unsafe.
Henry Ku, a proprietor of several restaurants, including Henry’s Taiwan Kitchen, which is located just east of 12th on Jackson, said business has been down 50% since the attacks. Ku believes the presence of homeless people contributes to violence and a general sense of insecurity in the neighborhood that in turn drives away foot traffic.
Ku opened his Little Saigon restaurant last year to help out his friend who owns the building on the south side of Jackson and had accrued losses due to vacancies. Ku said his relationship with the local homeless community has steadily deteriorated, listing negative interactions with people who acted erratically, smoked near his building and failed to pay their bill after ordering from the restaurant. He said some of his homeless neighbors used the parking garage as a bathroom and even started a large fire that caused property damage to the building.
According to Ku, the large presence of homeless people in the area is due to mismanagement by the Seattle city government, which he believes is “spoil[ing] them.” He said Seattle is hurting small businesses with high taxes and regulations like the minimum wage law and suggested that the city put unhoused people to work in order to regain stability.
“When police see you doing drugs on the street, they should put you in jail,” Ku said. “Don’t tell me the excuse, ‘Oh, it’s too expensive.’ We have so much raw land on the East Side. You can build a city up there for manufacturers. Put them in there to work.”
The Navigation Center, a city-funded shelter for people experiencing chronic homelessness located in Little Saigon on the corner of 12th and South Weller Street, is scheduled to close by January 2025. According to the International Examiner, the shelter received significant backlash and was accused by some CID residents of attracting homeless people to the area. However, Mayor Harrell’s office says the closure is due to building renovations.
Danh sees grievances like Ku’s as part of a wider way that capitalism drives polarization between different groups of people in the community and contributes to a wider sense of insecurity.
“We are all poor and working class; our struggles are about the same struggle of unhoused folks,” Danh said. “We are just one or two safety nets away from being unhoused ourselves. It’s just the way that America has built itself up. It’s pitting the working class against the poor and unhoused rather than who is the true enemy: the rich.”
Danh added that homeless people are part of the CID community and that ultimately the lack of housing and services is responsible for the suffering.
“I think the root of it is addiction; the drug issue is at the root of it, obviously,” Danh said. “But what causes that addiction? What social safety nets have failed for people to fall into that? I think that’s a question where we don’t have enough tools to catch people while they’re falling. We only can catch people while they’re down there, and that aggravates that problem.”
Chetanya Robinson contributed to this reporting.
